Saturday, 18 April 2015

I have borrowed this image from the Instagram album of my daughter Sahara. I was struck by the simplicity of the composition, but blown away by the depth and intricacy of the human ensemble. The girl in red takes centre stage among the living and the painted. She dominates the tableau by being in the middle and attains her dominance by the colour of her dress, the black sash wrapped around her waist, and the sharp endings of her elbows. Her hands resting in opposite direction of each other's have the subtlety of a hindu sculpture, voluptuous yet subdued. Her feet are gracious and almost anonymous and her whole demeanour conveys the innocence of a sacred icon in a temple or, better still, the accomplished grace conveyed by the brush of the best painter that ever was: Diego Velázquez.